:: Never Gotten An Email From Me At 3am? Hmm. Wonder Why. ::

Because I feel like I should be more conflicted about not working on my dissertation, I stage phony debates in my mind. I make molehills into mountains, ascribing significance where there need not be any. The current silly debate is this:

Should I return my last seven library books, or should I just continue to renew them over and over again, ten weeks at a time, until I am ready to use them?

Obviously the answer should be to return them. They have been sitting on my desk since April. There are probably other people who would like to use them. Plus I'm not all that confident that the part of my brain that remembers to renew them before their due dates won't be occupied at a crucial moment with singing "Froggy Went A-Courtin'" to my kid.

Furthermore, I don't even need them. Returning them really has no bearing on whether I finish this chapter or not. I have at least a full month of concentrated work (several months at the slow pace a baby induces, years at my current rate) before I need these books anyway. If I started spending three hours a day five days a week on this chapter I would not need these books until after their due date.

And yet I have worked up this silly debate, turned these books into the crucial linchpin holding me to my dissertation and preventing us both from falling into a deep, dark, possibly wet abyss.

I have drafted a couple different versions of this post in which I squirm over the decision and in which I say things like this:

They are on interesting topics like Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing and Fundamentals of Language. It's a wonder, really, that I haven't devoured them during nap times, letting Evan cry a few minutes so I can just finish this chapter.

I know. Year-Ago Me thought they were interesting. Now Me thinks they sound about as captivating as dust accumulating on picture frames. Enh. Who cares?

This is what we call Not Good.

I haven't worked on my dissertation in 30 days. One whole month. Not a single word read or written, not one intelligent dissertation-related thought pondered. I have done nothing and I don't miss it at all.

This is what we call Very Bad.

This, dear friends and readers, is what we call a load of crap. I do not feel bad at all. I have done nothing in 30 days and I don't miss it at all and I think that's just fine. I feel no inner turmoil about this, only outer turmoil. Only angst that I manufacture to veil ever-so-thinly the truth: that what I am really angst-y about is what you think of me for not caring.

What do you think of the fact that I am happily replacing Lodge's Modes of Modern Writing with Seuss's There's a Wocket In My Pocket?

What of the fact that I spent Evan's three hour long nap (!!!) yesterday afternoon emptying my entire closet and purging it of more than 75% of its contents and then knitted before bed, times when I might have been pondering the difference between how Henry James uses settings and how F. Scott Fitzgerald does?

Do you think I am being foolish?

Are you just so sure that I am going to regret this?

Do you think I've already given up on something I spent four-plus years on?

Do you think I'm a quitter or that I've just got blinders on to the fact that the glow of being a mommy will all wear off soon enough and I'll wish I had my Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing book here to pore over?

Self-torturing melodrama aside, though, I really feel like whatever happens with this dissertation, whether it gets finished or doesn't, it will be the right thing. I have applied for a fellowship which would allow me to continue getting my stipend for ONE FULL YEAR without teaching, in turn making it possible for me to work on my dissertation during the ten hours a week we currently have a babysitter. And if I get that, then maybe I will gladly take to the books like a plane to the sky. Maybe I won't. I really don't miss it at all.

And yet, that fellowship is probably the only way I am ever really going to be able to finish. I could always take a leave of absence and therefore not have to teach but we would also be losing a small but important sliver of our income, which is not OK. We're taking a hit already having to pay someone to watch Evan each week while I teach, but we'd be taking a much bigger hit if I quit teaching. And quitting teaching wouldn't give me any more time to write unless we could still have someone come in weekly so I could work. A triply big hit.

I know that other people have kids and teach and still write dissertations. These are the people who email you at 3 in the morning. My advisor, for example, emails me at 3 in the morning. I email you at 8:30 in the evening. I have this switch in my head that, like the valve in your car's gas line that prevents gas from flowing when your car is turned upside down, just won't allow me to overstress my body or my mind. I am supremely aware of my needs, my wants, and my limits. I prioritize like no Seven Habits disciple ever has before.

The only thing that still stands between these seven library books and their proper homes in the dusty, dank-smelling stacks is the fact that I will have to carry them. Nearly a mile. While carrying my other things for school.

Seems easier to just renew them.